Cyber risk solution of the year: LexisNexis Risk Solutions

As digital transaction adoption grows, financial firms are increasingly exposed to various fraud attacks. Firms need the right tools to mitigate potential fraud losses to protect themselves from potential data breaches and other malicious attacks. 

According to LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ latest Cybercrime Report, the Digital Identity Network processed 47.1 billion transactions in 2020, almost 12 billion higher than the previous year.

The fraud attack rate observed decreased on average across all digital businesses year over year, although media companies saw an increase in the overall attack rate at account opening. Despite the reduced attack rates recorded, malicious attack vectors persist as automated bot attacks offer fraudsters a cheap, quick and effective method of initial attack.

The Digital Identity Network recorded bot attacks globally and within a wide variety of industries and use cases. New account creations also continue to see high attack rates and are a key entry point for fraudsters looking to monetise credentials taken from data breaches.

The Digital Identity Network platform consists of 5.9 billion digital identifiers, 30 million confirmed fraud events shared in 2019, 82,200 average fraud events shared daily, transactions processed in over 150 countries, and analysed risk for 36.5 billion customer events in 2019.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ identity verification and authentication solutions help organisations mitigate fraud losses, improve end-user satisfaction and adapt quickly to emerging channels and trends.

Its solutions and decision tools combine public and industry-specific content paired with technology and analytics to assist firms in evaluating and predict risks, such as identity theft, fraud, money laundering and terrorism, and prevent financial crimes and insurance and government scams.

Cameron Church, director of market planning, fraud and identity at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, says the vendor has the tools to create a comprehensive, layered approach or to plug into organisations’ existing identity management framework easily.

This includes out-of-band and behavioural biometric solutions to support higher levels of assurance, identity document authentication that keeps up with changes in ID appearances, advanced analytics to allow for a more tailored authentication approach, real-time risk-based transaction scoring through digital identity intelligence, and authentication and fraud prevention using dynamic behavioural history that creates a true digital identity.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions combines physical and digital identities – including device, behavioural biometric and credit-seeking insights – to provide a 360-degree view of identities. Its fraud management and identity solutions allow firms to apply the appropriate level of security-related friction for every interaction across the customer lifecycle to prevent fraud before it happens.

LexisNexis ThreatMetrix is an enterprise solution for digital identity intelligence and authentication powered by insight from billions of transactions. It establishes a true digital identity by uniting digital and physical identity attributes to help businesses better differentiate between a trusted customer and a cyber threat in milliseconds. ThreatMetrix helps firms answer critical questions about new account origination, account logins and payment fraud management.

In 2020, LexisNexis Risk Solutions added LexisNexis Behavioral Biometrics to its portfolio of fraud and identity solutions. It is fully integrated into and accessed via ThreatMetrix. Behavioral Biometrics provides an additional layer of defence to risk assessment and can detect and block automated attacks and suspicious transactions.

Church says Behavioral Biometrics looks at interactive gestures, such as how an individual types on a keyboard, moves a mouse, holds a phone or taps a touch screen. It then compares those characteristics with known digital behavioural traits common to fraudsters, bots and trusted users.

Behavioral Biometrics can help firms separate human from non-human traffic like bots, identify ‘good’ trusted customer profiles, profile fraudsters, detect session anomalies and build trust relating to good customers.

Last year, it also acquired Emailage, a fraud prevention and risk management solutions provider. In November 2020, LexisNexis Risk Solutions launched LexisNexis Emailage. Emailage’s fraud prevention solutions assess fraud risks by using email address metadata. Email addresses are well-suited to identify customers as part of an organisation’s fraud and identity strategy since it is already a primary contact channel that organisations use to reach their customers.

On top of that, LexisNexis Risk Solutions recently launched LexisNexis Financial Crime Digital Intelligence, a new solution that leverages digital identity data to transform financial crime compliance workflows.

The solution combines the power of LexisNexis ThreatMetrix, the LexisNexis Dynamic Decision Platform, and LexisNexis WorldCompliance data. The solution allows financial crime compliance teams to keep pace and mitigate escalating sanctions risks associated with accelerated digital transaction adoption.

Financial Crime Digital Intelligence gives customers a customised workspace including purpose-built financial crime compliance capabilities, such as access to additional sanctions risk features, storage capacity, and user role configuration.

Church says Financial Crime Digital Intelligence helps firms identify true location-based sanctions risks in the digital channel and recognise returning entities attempting to evade IP blocking controls. It also combines digital identity and location intelligence with traditional financial crime data to create automated workflows and reduce false positives. In addition, it helps speed up investigations so firms can meet emerging regulatory requirements related to digital identity and location.

Asia Risk judges said LexisNexis Risk Solutions has a well-developed cyber risk product and it is highly relevant in the Asia-Pacific market.